


to swim through the fires / to stay in this world

by niuniujiaojiao



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Death, Fourier is Muslim and a lesbian, Gen, Hui is trans, Loss, The Lovelace Administration - Freeform, these friends break my heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 13:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niuniujiaojiao/pseuds/niuniujiaojiao
Summary: "Kuan smiles a little at that, revealing the dimple Fourier’s always found particularly endearing. If she was the kind of person who was pessimistic about Kuan’s chances of recovery, she might start thinking about how much she’ll miss that smile, or maybe wonder about how long she’ll be able to remember it once he’s gone. Fourier would like to think that she is not that kind of person."Kuan gets sick. Fourier copes.





	to swim through the fires / to stay in this world

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to the absolutely magical Elmira ([colormyworldbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colormyworldbright/pseuds/colormyworldbright)) for performing the dual duties of beta and sensitivity reader.
> 
> I am not Muslim or trans, so if anything in this fic is inaccurate, insensitive, or offensive in any way, please tell me, and I will fix that immediately.
> 
> (Title is from "Dogfish" by Mary Oliver.)

1.

Forty-two rotations after Fourier begins to notice something wrong with her friend, Kuan collapses in the middle of dinner. The rest of the crew react accordingly. Selberg is furious because “you should have told me about symptoms as soon as they started! It will be even harder to attempt cure this time”; the captain is distressed because apparently, her decision to refilter the air and make gas masks, gloves, and full-body protection suits mandatory apparel on the Hephaestus hasn’t stopped the virus from spreading and “god _dammit_ , we can’t afford to lose another crew member”; and Rhea beeps wildly about how Fisher and Lambert’s losses were already painful enough for her. Fourier, on the other hand, stands by without saying a word. Then, she rushes out of the room, leaving everyone else behind.

 

2.

The next time Fourier sees Kuan, he’s leaving Doctor Selberg’s laboratory, looking a little pale. He heads down the hallway with her, doing a decent job at pretending that nothing is wrong.

They begin their shifts together, like usual, despite Kuan’s condition. They’re rather short on crew members, after all. Work has always been an easy escape for Fourier. It’s comforting, witnessing the elegance of numbers and the way they interlock so perfectly with the workings of the universe. It reminds her that everything has a purpose, that there’s a plan to all of this. It is when she is so engrossed in her work that she can think of nothing else that Fourier can truly appreciate the glory of Allah and all His creation, and it’s one of the few times she and Kuan are perfectly in-sync.

(Of course, Fisher’s death still looms over her whenever they’re working as well. Fourier knows that she and Kuan have both blamed themselves for it in different ways, and even now, her mind will inadvertently turn to the times before the incident, of the stories she and Fisher traded of her wife and his boyfriend, and the jokes he would tell her whenever she was feeling homesick.)

The peace lasts five minutes, maybe six. Fourier turns to Kuan to ask if he can tell her what yesterday's radiation readings were and finds that he’s already looking at her. They hold eye contact for a few seconds. Then, simultaneously, they blurt out, “I’m sorry.” This is followed by two awkward laughs and a few more seconds of silence.

“V-Victoire,” Kuan finally stammers. “You… you should speak first.”

“No, no, you go first, I insist.”

“Well. If you _insist_ …” Kuan takes a breath. “I’m sorry for not telling you guys that I wasn’t feeling well sooner. I just… I thought I was making it up in my head because I was so afraid of getting infected, or that it wasn’t a big deal and I would be fine after some rest, and I just kept telling myself that, even when it was getting ridiculous… I guess I thought that telling someone- it would make it feel more real. And now I’m here.” He gives a wry chuckle. “I guess we all know how that ended up. Your turn.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t speak up as soon as I thought something might be off, which was… a pretty long time ago. And I’m sorry I just ditched you at dinner because I couldn’t deal with the situation instead of staying there to make sure you were okay.” There. A+ communication for both of them.

Kuan nods. “Okay. What do we do now?”

Fourier ponders the question for a few seconds. “I think… we should both acknowledge that the other person did some pretty awful things in the last few hours, and then you should tell me how you’re feeling—emotionally, mostly, but also physically—and what Selberg and the captain told you. And after we’ve both had a good cry, we should get back to work.”

Kuan smiles a little at that, revealing the dimple Fourier’s always found particularly endearing. If she was the kind of person who was pessimistic about Kuan’s chances of recovery, she might start thinking about how much she’ll miss that smile, or maybe wonder about how long she’ll be able to remember it once he’s gone. Fourier would like to think that she is not that kind of person.

“That sounds like an excellent idea.”

 

3.

Fourier watches Kuan open the airlock and step outside, his labored breath audible over the comms. He’s been getting weaker by the hour now, and this isn’t anywhere close to safety protocol, which is why he’s promised her that he’ll head back inside as soon as half of his oxygen has been used up. “I just want to see the star again, properly,” he’d told her, the words _one last time_ heavy and silent between them. He loves Wolf 359, just as much as she does, and she knew she’d never forgive herself if she let him go on his own. “And if it’s alright, could you read to me while I’m out there?”

So now, Fourier opens up the battered copy of _Dream Work_ in her hands and turns to the page she’s bookmarked. “Dogfish,” she reads. “By Mary Oliver. Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing / kept flickering in with the tide / and looking around / Black as a fisherman’s boot, / with a white belly…”

As she reads, she waits for the moment when Kuan will stop her and ask why she’s never shown him this book before, why she lied to him earlier when she said that he’d already read through all of her collection. He doesn’t ask. She’s not sure if she would tell him the truth, if he did.

She nears the end of the page much too quickly.

“... And look! look! look! I think those little fish / better wake up and dash themselves away / from the hopeless future that is / bulging toward them.

“And probably,” she finishes, “if they don’t waste time / looking for an easier world, / they can do it.”

There is silence for a long time. Then-

“Thank you,” Kuan whispers.

She turns the page.

 

4.

Fourier stops writing in her journal as soon as the captain declares Kuan no longer fit to work. She can’t afford to spend any of her precious free time writing thoughts down in a notebook when her friend is now _temporarily_ confined to the bed Lambert died in.

She probably should have learned something from her parents’ deaths, something about not waiting until it’s too late to let people know you care, but she also doesn’t want to think about Kuan’s life being anywhere in the vicinity of “too late.”

So instead, she tells him about what she did on her last rotation, things that the captain and Rhea said, things the instruments have picked up. She describes what the star looks like in the floweriest adjectives she can think of, and commits any solar flares to memory so that Kuan can imagine himself there too.

The closest thing she ever gets to sentimental is the occasional, “I love you- no hetero” the few times she’s so distraught that she can barely breathe. She knows it makes Kuan smile around the pain. She tells herself it’s the only reason she says it.

 

5.

About forty days later, Doctor Selberg tells Kuan that he’ll very likely lose mobility in his hands soon. All in all, it’s not a surprise. Kuan’s been bed-bound for some time now, only occasionally sitting up whenever Fourier desperately needs someone to double check her calculations and everyone else is busy (which is almost always, now). She hates those moments more than anything, how ridiculous she feels, clutching at her notebook with gloved hands and shouting through the gas mask so Kuan can hear her (it’s a safety precaution, she knows, but still), hates the helpless look in Kuan’s eyes whenever his mind moves so much faster than his pencil can scribble, hates the fact that they both know when the other is thinking about Fisher while they work.

Kuan asks the captain for a writing utensil and a few sheets of paper, and she gets them for him immediately. His hands tremble as he clicks the pen and lowers it to the paper. He told Fourier about his family once, a little over 200 days into the mission, when they were all still alive and the biggest issues they had to deal with were radiation trials and the captain’s ongoing attempts to avoid arguing with Lambert. She’d found Kuan in his quarters, staring longingly at a photograph of three smiling women in front of an apartment complex. He’d pointed out his mother to her, and then his two older sisters, Li Qing and Li Xin, and told her how his dead name (Hui Li Zhuan) had fit perfectly into that set before he’d decided on the more masculine Kuan Hui (pronounced _kwan hway_ , not _kwahn hwee_ or whatever the crew had been saying up to that point). He’d told her how his father died of lung cancer just a few years after sending his son off to America for a “better education,” how his mother was never quite the same afterwards, how he still misses the humidity and cigarette smoke and skyscrapers of Shanghai and how it’s been two whole summers since he’d visited them last. Victoire guesses that by now, that number has been bumped up to three. Maybe four.

Kuan carves a line into the paper, painstakingly, and then another, his hands still trembling. Victoire stands by and watches, fingers itching to _help_ , somehow. A few minutes later, the pen slips out of Kuan’s hands, and he swears.

“If you tell me what you want to write, I can transcribe for you?” she offers as she presses the pen back into his hand. As much as she hopes he’ll accept her assistance, she doesn’t expect a yes. She knows she wouldn’t want Kuan to hear anything she’d write in a goodbye letter to Faiza, and they were only married a year before she started this mission. Kuan’s known his family for his entire life.

Kuan shakes his head. “I… no, thank you, I just…” he takes a breath. “When they find out… I want it to at least be my handwriting. And besides, how many Chinese characters do you know how to write?”

“Oh, right.” Fourier blushes under the mask. “I hadn’t considered that.”

 

6.

Fourier finishes reading _Dream Work_ to Kuan and starts going through the Wodehouse books again. It’s difficult. Before the coughing got really bad, she could sometimes almost forget that Kuan was sick. If she kept her eyes focused on the page, her mind blank of anything besides blocks of words she never had to think up herself, she could imagine that the two of them were drifting around the observation deck after finishing up work, Kuan looking out at the star as she read to him. Now, though, she’s not even sure if he can hear her properly over the sound of his own hacking breaths. Even so, she keeps her voice steady, turns pages, does character voices when she can, tries to pretend everything is fine, for both their sakes.

“How the _devil_ can you be assaulted by a duck pond?” she exclaims, in her best imitation of a snobby Englishman, and makes herself believe that the coughing fit she hears is actually laughter.

 

7.

“After command finally rescue us all, you’re going to a hospital with better supplies and actual gravity. I’ll see you every day during visiting hours, and they’ll release you after a month or so. We can all give Fisher and Lambert a proper funeral. You can go see your family again, and I’ll be able to wear my wedding band, and when Faiza gets on a flight to where we are, she and I will do that dramatic run through the airport towards each other that we’ve always dreamed about. She’d love you, I know she would. And after that, we’ll go to Brussels. I’ll take you to the Magritte Museum and you can criticize each piece until the rest of the visitors start giving you dirty looks, and we can eat actual food that isn’t made of flavored seaweed. You’re automatically invited to our Eid party, by the way. If you feel like living in the UK for a while, you can move into the same apartment building as me and Faiza, and if you stay in America or move back to Shanghai, we’ll just Skype every day instead. We’ll have to deal with moving around on the ground again and accidentally dropping mugs and watching them shatter and cleaning up the pieces. And imagine all the books that have been published while we’ve been up here. At least a few of them should be absolutely spectacular. I can’t wait, Kuan. Can you?”

 

8.

The captain and Doctor Selberg have begun to lower their voices whenever they pass Fourier in the halls, and she is furious at them for thinking that she won’t be able to handle their version of the truth and even more furious at herself for starting to think that maybe, their version of the truth is the right one. She tells herself there’s nothing to worry about, but she’s also stopped doing her job (or at least, all the parts of it that aren’t necessary to keep them all afloat and alive) in favor of trying to fix the comms system and visiting Kuan. Just in case.

Today, though, she’s on break in her quarters. Kuan’s usually asleep around this point in her rotation—not that that’s ever stopped her from visiting the lab before. But today, she’s exhausted and jaded and can practically feel the hope slipping through her fingers. After a quick look around her, she makes a split second decision.

Victoire isn’t sure if the recycled water in the showers is permissible for _ghusl_ , but she doesn’t have a second option. It’s cold and uncomfortable, and she finishes as quickly as she can, hoping that she hasn’t forgotten any steps. After she returns to her quarters, there are yet more issues. There’s no way to know the sun’s position from the Hephaestus, she has no idea what direction Earth is, let alone Mecca, and she can’t quite perform all the actions in zero gravity. She settles for getting into a kneeling position and attaching her legs to her sleeping bag. Standing at first and then readjusting the straps in the middle of proceedings would be too distracting.

Victoire’s never been the most virtuous Muslim, not even when she lived with her parents. Faiza wasn't much better. Back on Earth, though, they were able to remind each other to keep faith. They donated to the poor. They went to the mosque on Fridays. They fasted during Ramadan. When they were in the same place at the right time, they prayed. Victoire had every intention of continuing to practice in space. In the beginning, she prayed as much as she could, but after a while, her duties and the ship deciding to blow up every other day began to eclipse everything else. Her copy of the Qur'an lay untouched in a drawer. By the time Day 100 had rolled around, she had pretty much _let_ herself forget. Right now, though, she regrets all those lost days with everything she has. Right now, this feels more important than anything else.

Victoire takes a deep breath and tries to clear her mind.

“ _Allahu Akbar_ ,” she whispers, and carries on from there, focusing only on the meaning of the lines she’s reciting. Despite how long it's been, the words come easily to her. It's muscle memory, as natural as breathing. She prays for forgiveness for all her sins, the little ones that gnaw at her whenever she thinks about them, and as she does, she feels the comfort that prayer has always given her settling around her like a blanket, the comfort that she has missed for so long on this station without realizing it. As she prays, her body feels more and more real, almost like she’s standing on solid ground again. And afterwards, when she’s acknowledged the two angels beside her and unstraps herself from the wall, the weight in her chest feels a little bit lighter. She’ll do this four more times today, she decides, and five times the next day, for as long as she’s able to.

 _This is all happening for a reason_ , Victoire thinks, letting the thought wash over her. _It'll be okay, in the end._ Maybe not for her and Kuan and the rest of this crew, but eventually, somehow, it will all be okay.

 

9.

Kuan’s face has grown so thin since the illness set in. He’s almost unrecognizable from the round, grinning man who’d first shaken Fourier’s hand aboard the Hephaestus. Just the sight of him makes her chest ache, and he’s still here _._

“Doctor Selberg said the cough is easing up,” she says, moving closer to him. “How are you feeling?”

Victoire Fourier has been through loss and pain. Victoire Fourier does not expect a positive response to her question. Victoire Fourier has spent over a hundred days trying not to break from all of this and succeeded. Victoire Fourier is also completely unprepared for Kuan’s answer.

“Ask for me tomorrow,” he rasps, “and you shall find me a grave man.”

Victoire tries not to cry. She really, really tries, but Kuan is lying there, eyes struggling to remain open, forcing the corner of his mouth up in an approximation of a smile, and she is tired and he is dying and it’s just so much easier to let go. At least he can’t see her face properly.

Water clings to her eyes like a new lover, and isn’t it awful that she can’t even _cry_ properly for Kuan, can’t even let the tears run down her face and drip off her chin and leave streaks on her cheeks, the way they did when her parents died? At least a river _ends_ somewhere. She could literally drown in her tears right now, let them fill up inside this gas mask in this white-walled laboratory seven point five light years away from Earth, and wouldn’t that be ironic and poetic in all the right ways?

She wants to cry properly for Kuan, she wants him to be lying in a bed that doesn’t require straps to keep its occupants from floating away, with her seated nearby in a proper hospital chair, surrounded by nurses and beeping machines and patients’ voices, but she’s here instead. She wants to tell him that Allah tests everyone, that this is all happening for a higher purpose, but the lump in her throat won’t let her. She wants, more than anything, the two of them to be able to grieve and suffer like _normal_ people. But they can’t, so the only thing she can do is grip her friend’s hand, hard, and try not to think about the fact that he no longer has the strength to squeeze back.

 

10.

A few days after she cleans out Kuan’s quarters and places his letters in a safe to take back if- _when_ they return to Earth, the captain hands Fourier another letter from Kuan, addressed to her. As Victoire takes it from her hand, she feels her back begin to itch.

 


End file.
